


asymptote

by tegary



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Bond 25, Everyone knows about Q’s crush, I promise, Lashana Lynch as 007, M/M, More tags to be added, Now with more cats, Rating will change, isn’t it, mission!fic, some day I will learn how to tag, the pining is mutual, this is going to be a slow burn, today is not that day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-07-07 21:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19858621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tegary/pseuds/tegary
Summary: asymptote (n.): a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance.“The way I see it,” Q had replied, the first time he’d spoken in near an hour, “he’s going to do it whether or not ‘Six sanctions him. We all know what he’s capable of. Wouldn’t we rather have him on our side than have to pick our way through his trail of destruction?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please let the rumors about Lashana Lynch’s character be true.

She’s been tailing him all night.

The first time, James might have believed it innocent enough. He’d been winding his way through the crowded bar, deftly side-stepping undulating, inebriated bodies, when she’d bumped up against him. Just the barest knock of their hips, the dark worsted wool of James’s trousers against the sleek black of her dress.  
  
The look she’d given him from under thick, glossy lashes had been full of intrigue. If Bond hadn’t been on such a warpath for the information he needed, he certainly would have paused to return the interest. But, as it were, the man he’d been searching for had been sat right across the bar, downing what was likely Manhattan number three.  
  
“Pardon me,” he’d said curtly, giving a nod as he ducked back into the crowd.

Had he looked back, he would have seen the sharp focus of her eyes; the soft, surreptitious murmur she’d aimed at no-one in particular.  
  
The next time he’s aware of her is near ten minutes later, when James has already sidled up to the bar and given a sympathetic nod to Franz’s heartbroken former lackey. He’s nursing a drink himself, though his sips are light, measured. Slowly turning, James props his arms casually up against the counter, collins glass gripped lightly in his fingertips. To a civilian, his slow, hooded glance around the room might seem characteristic of a sybarite surveying his options for a next indulgence. To James, it’s habit. Two exits behind him, including the one he entered from, and one to his right. There’s a sprinkler network on the ceiling that could provide cover should an escape be necessary. The dance floor is terribly crowded, his best bet should things go pear-shaped is through the quieter lounge area.  
  
His gaze doesn’t pause or falter as it passes over the woman from before, leant against a chair to his left. She, too, has a glass gripped lightly in one hand, but it’s mostly full, seemingly more prop than refreshment. She’s got an arm slung lazily over the back of the chair, but James notes the way her body is just slightly tensed, back a bit too straight. As James’s eyes sweep past her to a blonde in a tight little red number to her left, the woman lifts her glass to take a sip. James catches the minute working of her jaw from his peripherals and hazards that there’s an earpiece hidden behind the curl to her hair.  
  
New blood, then. She’s obviously had training, but it’s not second nature to her quite yet. James would wager on two or three years at the most. She at least has the sense not to touch her ear.  
  
The sharp tailor of her dress and the watch just-this-side of fashionably chunky suggests to James that she’s got someone kitting her. Which, in turn, suggests that she’s in the service. Where, he’s unsure. He’d have to catch some of her mannerisms to hazard a guess, but assumptions are often deadly in the field.  
  
He returns his gaze to the man beside him, who has just finished a long and drunken tale of love lost. James is far past the point of commiseration. By the end of his tenure at Six, Bond had been firmly ensconced in the business of loss. He’d hoped that walking away from it all would bring an end to his abysmal record.  
  
Naïve is too young a word for someone like him.  
  
It’s easy enough to guide the conversation away from the man’s green-eyed one-that got-away and towards what it is that James really needs from him. Especially after James gives him a firm clasp on the shoulder and asks the bartender for something stiff for his new friend.  
  
James’s newest admirer orbits them as his mark unloads his woes, how his old job demanded too much of his time (what, with creating a world-wide security network and all that) and how it drove his Alyssa away. James give a faux-sympathetic grunt, attention split between carefully picking information he needs out of the story and keeping an eye on the woman from his peripherals. She never strays too far.  
  
“I took her for granted,” the man (Trevor), finishes weakly. The ridiculous waterworks show that he just finished seems to have sobered him up a bit. “She was always there for me, guiding me, believing in me. I just didn’t know how much I needed her until I had gone and fucked it up.”  
  
“Isn’t that the truth of it,” James says, and for the first time in this whole bloody conversation, he means it.  
  
James lets an easy, contemplative silence stretch between them for a few long moments before he excuses himself.  
  
He counts, one-one thousand, two one-thousand, as he walks through the back door. Mawdsley’s general rule when tailing a mark was to always wait ten seconds before following them in or out of a location.  
  
She follows at nine.  
  
The nonchalant slide of James’s hands into his pockets stands in sharp contrast to his inner state. He’s sharply alert, taking in every corner, back alley, and possible distraction he could use to lose her. There’s a few possibilities of who she could be working for, and James is willing to deal with exactly none of them. He’s spent his time on a leash (though, granted, he’d spent a few decades of his life working that leash looser and looser).  
  
Franz has to die. James wants it to happen by his hand, in his way.  
  
She trails him for another three blocks as he tries to lose her in more subtle fashions: slipping behind a wall, getting lost in the crowd, stopping for a moment to force her to pass. But she continues to linger just at the edges of his vision, pausing every so often to let James gain a foot or two before beginning again.  
  
They eventually reach the main pier, which is blessedly empty at this time of night. It’s here that James changes tactics: he strolls right out to the end, leaning against the railing to gaze across the cobalt of the ocean at night. When he tips his head slowly to the side, he sees that she’s hesitated at the other end, likely waiting on the voice in her ear to decide whether or not the forced confrontation is too much of a risk.  
  
James turns his gaze to the ocean again as she takes the first step forward. He’s a fairly good swimmer, should his gamble fail to pay off. The sea, despite its multiple attempts, hasn’t been able to take him quite yet.  
  
“Nice night,” he says when the sound of heels on wood alerts him to her proximity. He gives a lazy half-glance over his shoulder as she approaches, joining him in leaning against the railing. The brush of her hand over her left hip is minute, invisible to an untrained eye. But James catches it, thinks to the solid weight of his own pistol holstered right under his ribs.  
  
“You really shouldn’t be here,” she says, measured, after a few beats of nothing but waves up against the rocky shoreline. 

“And yet, here I am,” he drawls, turning to get his first good look at her.  
  
She’s fairly tall, and with the added height of the heels, they’re practically even. Her dark eyes, expertly lined, are sharp, alert. There’s an almost-amused tilt to the corners of her red-painted mouth. From this close, James can see the minute disruption in the curl pattern of her shiny black hair where the antennae to her earpiece doesn’t lay flat.  
  
“You’ll need to come with me.”  
  
James allows a chuckle, turning his gaze back to the ocean. “I already have evening plans.”  
  
“I’m afraid I have the authority to detain you.”  
  
“I’m afraid I’ve never been much for authority.”  
  
James’s hand is around her wrist before she can even disengage the safety, twisting it expertly backwards to force her to drop her weapon. It lands almost perfectly in his palm, and he wraps his hand tight around the grip, levelling the muzzle at her carotid.  
  
She doesn’t look shaken in the slightest. On the contrary, the woman looks downright smug, and James follows her gaze when it flicks down to the rear sight of the Walther aimed at her neck.  
  
Three red lights are blinking back at him.  
  
James’s stomach makes a dizzying drop, and when he looks back up, she’s pulled a second gun from somewhere. He knows better than to try the Walther’s trigger.  
  
Her aim remains true as she reaches up with her left hand, removing the wireless receiver from her ear. She dangles it, teasing, from her thumb and pointer fingers.  
  
“He wants to talk to you,” she says, and James’s hands are strictly steady as he cautiously reaches for it, 9mm strapped to his chest entirely forgotten.  
  
“Bond,” the voice on the other side is tinny with static, but it’s still crisp, unbothered. Vitally familiar.  
  
A voice he thought he’d never hear again.  
  
________  
  
M had called a meeting when the intel first came in.  
  
Q had been silent for most of it, leaning against the polished mahogany of M’s office door. He had needed something to ground him. Every so often, Eve would send him soft looks just this side of pity, but Q had stared resolutely ahead, counting each tick of M’s prized grandfather clock in the corner of the room. On and on until they blurred together into one monotonous drone.  
  
They’d all been at a loss for how to approach it. Even M, bless his soul, had felt the same half-exasperated fondness for their ex double-oh that the rest of MI6 seemed to hold. Bond’s departure had been the veritable end of an era, and though MI6 had carried on, as they did, his absence had been powerfully felt. Especially in Q Branch, where James had taken to coming round at all hours of the day to rifle through Q’s prototypes and steal a page out of his daily sudoku puzzles.  
  
“Maybe I just like seeing you,” Bond had said when Q complained about the increasingly-common distraction one day.  
  
It was a small fucking wonder Q had felt the way that he did.  
  
“He’s a liability,” Tanner finally said, giving voice to a thought that had felt oddly like betrayal. “He’ll want vengeance, and that makes him dangerous. The PM’s already calling for our heads over the fact that Oberhauser even escaped in the first place.”  
  
“The way I see it,” Q had replied, the first time he’d spoken in near an hour, “he’s going to do it whether or not ‘Six sanctions him. We all know what he’s capable of. Wouldn’t we rather have him on our side than have to pick our way through his trail of destruction?”  
  
He was met with a heavy silence. M, from where he was still seated behind his desk, pressed a hand to the fold between his eyebrows.  
  
“...send her,” he’d said after a moment more, steepling his hands in front of his mouth. Q hadn’t needed to ask to whom he was referring.  
  
R visits him twice that day, bearing a fresh cuppa and a sympathetic smile each time. The second time, she passes the mug to Q before gathering up her long skirt so that she can sit on the corner of his desk (he always has it cleared, for her.)  
  
“Q-bert,” She greets, testing her own cuppa against her upper lip. He cracks a small smile and does the same.  
  
“Bethenny,” He responds, and the use of her given name earns him a crinkle at the bridge of her nose.  
  
She takes a long draw from her tea as he saves the project that he’s been staring at blankly for half the afternoon, shutting his laptop and sliding it to the side.  
  
“How are you?” She asks, though the look in her eyes and the mug in Q’s hand says she already knows the answer.  
  
The branch is slow for a Thursday. Most of the minions are out in the labs, save a few of the interns who are puttering around at the edge of Q’s workshop, hard at work copying over schematics. When Q clears his throat, they look up.  
  
“Aisha, Michael,” he says, not unkindly. “Go ahead and take a 15 now, if you’d please. I need to discuss something with R.”  
  
As the two leave, Q hits the button on his desk that closes the large blast doors. The noise from the branch outside slowly disappears, and Q feels his shoulders sink until he’s slumped bonelessly in his chair, mug warm between his hands.  
  
“Fearless leader,” R comments mildly, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. “You can show weakness around them sometimes, you know. They care about you.”  
  
Choosing to answer her earlier question is far easier than attempting to parse out a response to _that_ statement. “I can’t do this right now,” he says, taking off his ever-present glasses in order to rub his fists against his eyes. “Not with Oberhauser on the loose, and biochem moving on to clinical trials, and One and Three’s extractions on Sunday. Christ, I was just getting over—“  
  
R’s smile is gentle, knowing. Q curses and rests his head against the cool metal of his desk.  
  
“Was it obvious?”  
  
“Painfully,” she says, easy as you please. “Q, you got on a _plane_ for him.”  
  
“Bugger,” he says, passionately, to the Matryoshka that’s been sitting on his desk for the past five bloody years. Bond had dropped it off after his last trip to Russia. Said something about liking things that kept him on his toes.  
  
“Like you,” the agent had winked.  
  
“I can take this one for you,” R offers, reaching out to tuck a wayward curl behind Q’s ear. For the first time in his career at MI6, Q considers abdicating a handling assignment. R is a terribly brilliant handler, after all. Her last mission with the notoriously difficult double-oh thirteen had been a complete and unmitigated success.  
  
But damn it, he’s the Quartermaster. He’s never passed on a mission before, and like hell if Bond is about to be his first.  
  
“I appreciate it, Beth,” he says, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “But I’ll be fine. Besides, my sarcasm could use some brushing up on. I don’t have near enough opportunities to use it anymore.”  
  
She scoffs at him before purloining his nearly-full mug.  
  
Later that night, he watches his agent in her slow pursuit, catching what he can between CCTV and the tiny camera he’d concealed in her necklace. The branch is empty save for R and a few minions pulling the graveyard shift, and Q is alone in his workshop, face illuminated by the split-screen surveillance he’s got projected on the wall.  
  
“He’s not interested,” the agent says conversationally after her first brush with Bond. Q’s teeth grit painfully in the back of his mouth. Initially, he hadn’t seen much, just a flash of the dark grey of a well-tailored suit.  
  
Q hadn’t been prepared, though, for the sound of his voice.  
  
“Pardon me.” A simple enough phrase, though with the way Q’s heart had leapt into his throat, one might have thought it a declaration of love. As the man walks away, the back of his head comes into frame.  
  
When his agent clears her throat, Q realizes he’s gone worryingly silent.  
  
He takes a lap around his desk to right himself, one hand pushed roughly into his hair. He needs to get hold of himself. He’s not some lovesick teenager. Q has handled the fall of drug cartels and watched his agents die in the field, dammit. He can handle James Bond. In fact, he used to do so regularly, once upon a time.  
  
“I told you the honeypot angle wouldn’t work,” Q says succinctly, coming to a stop once again in front of his screen. “Nothing distracts the man when he’s got vengeance on the mind.”  
  
“Never hurts to try,” she sing-songs back, under her breath, and Q actually quirks a smile.  
  
They decide to try Q’s plan next. The agent is to make some rookie mistakes, cue Bond in to the fact that he’s being followed. Q’s hoping to play to Bond’s curious streak. 

Her posturing is, as always, impeccable. She holds herself just a little too tense, stays just a little too close to Bond for it to be coincidence. Every few minutes, she’ll throw a witty little observation at Q, letting her lips move just enough that it’s obvious to a trained eye. 

“I should touch my ear,” she murmurs around her virtually brimful sour, hand already moving towards her hair. From where he’s got a hip propped against his desk, arms crossed, Q gives a scoff.

“Not unless you’re hoping he sees right through our plan.” The CCTV feed Q is pulling from the bar just barely catches Bond at its leftmost corner, effortlessly pulling information from their (shared) mark like he hasn’t been living some wonderful domestic life with a one Dr. Swann for the past five years. 

Q realizes that he doesn’t _actually_ know what Bond’s been up to since that day on the bridge half a decade ago. Besides, assumptions in the field are often deadly.

“Scowl like that for much longer and your face will freeze that way,” R remarks as she strolls by, leaving a box of carry-out from the Cantonese restaurant down the street on his desk. Q blows her a kiss as she leaves.

“You’re an angel, Beth.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” She calls in return.

They have to wait about fifteen more minutes for Bond to make his move, during which time Q mutes his mic and absolutely demolishes five pork buns. It’s rare that he forgets to eat, though with all of the stress he’s been under lately, Q supposes it can be forgiven. 

“He’s moving,” Q states, and on the screen, his agent’s attention is drawn from a petite blonde in a shocking little red ensemble.

“How is it that I always get the philogynists,” Q sighs good-naturedly, returning to his console so that he can switch CCTV feeds. Bond’s just now ducking out the back entrance. “Wait ten seconds before you pursue.”

“Now don’t you worry, Quartermaster,” the agent replies, slipping effortlessly between bodies on the dance floor. “I’ve loved enough women for the both of us.”

She follows at nine. 

It’s a fair bit harder to track them on the streets. Q has to bounce between different CCTV feeds at a decent clip, as they hadn’t been able to accurately predict the path that Bond would take. Q’s agent does a respectable job at steering Bond towards the boardwalk along the southern edge of town, but they do almost lose him twice as the sneaky bastard tries to blend in with the crowds of nighttime party-chasers.

The change is obvious when Bond saunters to his left instead of continuing forward towards the marina. They’re far enough away from town now that Q is relying entirely on the necklace camera for visual, and it’s almost impossible to make out Bond’s shape at the end of the pier.

“What now?” It’s barely audible.

Q nibbles at his thumbnail, a nasty habit that he really should attempt to break. His eyes flick back and forth between the CCTV feeds he has running from a few little shops at the start of the boardwalk--they’re blessedly free of civilians this late at night. Bond is trying to goad them into a confrontation. This is exactly what Q had been betting on. The man’s only escape is into the water beyond the pier, though Q wouldn’t put it past Bond to do just that if he thought it the best option. 

“Careful on the approach,” Q decides. “Don’t lead with the whole MI6 spiel, but have it ready in case he gets testy.”

It’s been a long time since a mission has had Q’s heart in his throat like this. He’s scarcely breathing as his agent walks down the pier, joining Bond against the railing.

“Nice night,” Bond comments, sounding sorely uninterested. But Q knows better. Q has always known better.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” She says to him, and on the other end, Q frowns. Of course, she knows who Bond is. Q had briefed her on the mission details himself. But he’s never known the woman to be the petty type, though Q supposes he can understand how she must feel finally meeting the MI6-wide celebrity that is James Bond. When she’d first arrived, his departure was still the sole topic of conversation around the water cooler.

Bond turns to look at her, and Q’s main feed is suddenly full of a familiar, if not a bit out-of-focus, face. 

He hasn’t aged a day in five years, though the sucker-punched purple ringing his under eyes makes him look like he hasn’t slept in about a week. Q would bet on it. He’s also got an odd little half-moon gash at the crest of his left cheekbone, held together by a tiny white plaster.

“And yet, here I am.”

The cocky half-smile hasn’t changed much, either. 

“You’ll need to come with me,” the agent says, and the dangerous little chuckle Bond gives in response sets off warning bells in Q’s head.

“Careful,” He warns lowly, stepping around his desk again to get closer to the surveillance screen like it might help somehow.

Q bites the inside of his cheek as Bond turns his attention back to the water, as if the agent beside him is nothing more than a slight nuisance. As the Quartermaster, Q takes pride in knowing all of his agents well. This one has a thing for being underestimated, and Q can hear the tension creeping into her voice with her next words.

“I’m afraid I have the authority to detain you.”

Bond had likewise been one of Q’s agents. Coincidentally, he also had the most deep-seated hatred of authority Q had ever witnessed in his life. 

“ _Careful”_ , he hisses this time, knuckles going white where he has his hands wrapped around his own crossed arms. 

“I’m afraid I’ve never been much for authority.”

Everything happens at once, then. Q isn’t sure who moves first, but suddenly his agent has her Walther out and James has a hand around her wrist, twisting in a disarming measure that Q has seen him perform hundreds of times. 

Convinced everything is about to go tits up, Q’s a moment away from calling for backup when suddenly, all of the movement on the screen before him stops.

Bond is staring, wide-eyed as he’ll allow, at the grip on the back of the stolen Walther. It takes a moment for Q to realize what’s going on, and when he does, he sinks back against the edge of his desk in relief. Chrissakes, he made the damn palmprint scanner. He should have known that there was nothing to worry about. 

His agent has pulled a Beretta from God-knows-where, and Q’s niggling little feeling that he should send her with a back-up plan is now vindicated. One can never be too sure when it comes to James Bond.

The way Bond is staring at the Walther gives Q pause, though, and slowly, an idea begins to take shape. Q worries his lower lip between his teeth for a moment before he makes up his mind.

“Let me talk to him.”

________

When all is said and done, Q watches as his agent takes her earpiece back, returns it to its rightful place. Bond follows her off the pier.

“Excellent job, 007,” Q says to her.

007’s smile sharpens.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “007,” Q addresses crisply, and if he feels anything at seeing Bond again, it doesn’t show. James quirks his most charming roguish smile, opens his mouth to respond, and—
> 
> “Yes, Quartermaster,” the woman next to him replies, and she really deserves an award for how many times she’s managed to throw James for a loop in the past twenty-four hours. She’s likely surpassed Q’s previous record during the Skyfall incident, in that regard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S/O to my hour-long commute to the office by train for giving me the time to write and edit this fic. Also, S/O to my poor seat partners who have had to deal with me muttering to myself and typing away at my phone like I'm in a particularly heated argument with a significant other. Thanks for not getting up and changing seats on me.

Q gets them on a plane before dragging himself home and dropping into a dead slumber.

The cats are, of course, absolutely pissed at him. The whole Oberhauser situation in itself has kept him away from home most nights this week, what with Q barely getting an hour or two per day to pass out on the couch in his workshop between national crises. 

He checks their automatic food and water bowls before opening two cans of tuna as an apology. Benny forgives him near immediately after that, though Björn takes a solid five minutes of head scratches before he deems Q worthy of a gentle headbutt against his leg. By the time Q’s feline overlords are appeased, his eyes have fallen to half-mast, and he barely remembers to toe off his shoes before his head hits the pillow.

Word has spread around ‘Six by the time Q arrives at 0800 the next morning. Sometimes he wonders how they run a successful foreign intelligence service at all, what with how disposed the staff are to gossip. Q supposes he can’t think himself above it, not with the non-zero chance that it was one of his _own_ employees that leaked the news.

Every pair of eyes in Q-branch turns to him when Q scans himself in that morning, and it takes him a solid few beats before he can think of something to say.

“Don’t you all have work to do?” Is the uninspired offering, though Q’s unimpressed-bordering-on-displeased tone is probably what gets the job done. Everyone disperses, save R, who is juggling the contents of two kits with a headset over her ear.

“Anything from 007?” Q asks as he takes them off her hands, motioning towards his workshop as he recaptures the attention of a few of the cybersecurity minions. R mutes her mic and follows, making herself comfy on Q’s couch. The uninitiated might assume the liquid in R’s thermos to be tea, but Q knows she hides energy drinks in there when she has to pull the graveyard shift. 

“They landed half an hour ago,” she says with a yawn, flapping a hand at the flight status displayed on one of Q’s monitors. “Flight went off without a hitch. She thanks you for the first-class seats.”

“Thank the taxpayers,” Q deadpans, dropping a teabag into his own thermos. “They were the only seats available on such short notice.” He makes a quick check of all his systems and active missions while it steeps, only taking a seat at his desk once they all return the expected results.

“...how’s he been?” He tries not to sound overly interested, but R hides a smirk behind the rim of her thermos regardless.

“Quiet,” she responds after taking a truly frighteningly large gulp of whatever chemical concoction she’s nursing today. “He put in the second earwig that you sent 007 with, but aside from a greeting this morning, he’s let her do all the talking. Doubt he’s comfortable with me, though, seeing as I was just a cybersecurity minion last he saw me.”

“It’s not you,” Q remarks, scanning a few completed mission reports that came through overnight. “The man has an issue with handlers. He was the same way with the old R, and that man had worked here near as long as Boothroyd. What’s this on Jeremy’s report about Four’s Walther?”

“Funny thing, that,” she gets up and walks over to Q’s desk, pulling the gun from one of its many drawers. “Four came in for his debrief early this morning and was ranting about how the thing had nearly gotten him killed. He says that it just stopped working in the middle of a fight yesterday. Apparently, he had to strangle the guy to death with his bare hands. Jeremy, on the other hand, says he disarmed his mark and used his gun.”

Accepting the Walther from her outstretched hands, Q gives it a quick once-over. Besides the expected wear and tear from one of Four’s hit missions, it doesn’t seem to have any external damage that might cause a malfunction.

“Regardless,” he says, wrapping his hand around the grip. “I’ll run diagnostics. And smooth things over with Four. We can’t just have guns failing on our agents in the field.” After a moment, the LEDs on the rear sight light up yellow instead of their normal red or green. Q frowns.

“It went through a reboot,” he notes, intrigued. 

“I’ll check in with him again, but I can guarantee that neither Jeremy or I initiated a reboot sequence.” After R connects the Walther to Q’s console, she pauses and lifts a hand to her ear.

“Still R here, 007,” and Q looks up from where he’s trying to save his woefully oversteeped Earl Grey. “Yes, he’s in now.”

Q motions towards his own headset with a quirked eyebrow, but R just gives him a tiny shake of the head. “Right,” she says into the mic. “We’ll see you soon, then. Report to Q to de-kit before your debrief. R signing off.”

She tugs her headset off after, and Q watches her struggle about with where it catches in her long black hair for a moment before he reaches over to help. Between the two of them, they manage to work it free with only a few strands as casualty.

“Thanks,” she says, reaching back to expertly twist it into a bun atop her head. “007 says they’re on their way now. M sent word this morning that he wants the both of them disarmed before the debrief. Just to be safe.”

“I hope he doesn’t expect me to give Bond a pat-down,” Q remarks drily, grabbing a sterilized tray from the cabinet behind him. “You remember how many knives he had on him after that Saudi Arabia mission.” 

R snorts before levelling her face, holding out a hand towards Q. “‘ _All_ of them, 007,’” she says in her best Q-voice, which is pitched only a touch lower, but theatrically posher. Shame-faced, Q pretends to reach into his waistband and retrieve a knife from where it’s holstered at his thigh.

They break into shared laughter after, and R shakes her head, packing her messenger bag in preparation to head home.

“Q?” She pauses before she leaves, and Q glances up from where he’s preparing his desk for the de-kitting.

“You said he had trouble with handlers,” and Q nods, unsure of where she’s going with this. “Well, he never seemed to have a problem with you.”

She’s out the door before Q can think to remind her that she hadn’t been around for the Skyfall incident.

He ruminates on that for the next half hour as he putters around his workshop, running precursory scans on Four’s Walther and checking through the latest report from biochem, doing all he can to distract himself from the reunion that’s about to take place. Q had been right, after all. R hadn’t been on yet when Skyfall had happened. She hadn’t seen how resistant Bond had been to listen to his still wet-behind-the-ears Quartermaster, how meticulously Q had worked to gain his trust. By the time Oberhauser had come round, Q and Bond had been the envy of the handling team. There was a stretch of time in which they’d been M’s favorite agent-handler pair for the more critical missions, what with how high their mission success rate had gotten.

Though Q and the current 007 get on just fine, he misses that natural fit and easy chemistry. He misses the sharp banter. Hell, he even (occasionally) misses the exasperated scolding he’d give Bond after a thrown Walther or broken radio.

(He also misses how Bond would sulk about his branch after one of those scoldings, turning those great big blue eyes on Q until the Quartermaster would relent and finally forgive him. Q wouldn’t admit to this at knifepoint, though.)

_Christ._

Q is at the entry to his branch at half-nine, set up at the standing desk he uses for his section’s infrequent staff meetings. Usually he takes de-kittings in his workshop, but he’s hoping to catch Seven and Bond before his minions figure out what’s going on.

_The great lot of gossipers._

An alert pings on Q’s laptop, a signal that 007’s palm print has scanned her into the security doors just outside the basement elevators. He’d installed the tech at every means of entry to the branch after an incident two years ago in which a counter-operative had used the prox key of one of Q’s fallen agents to gain entry to the building. Q still remembers the smell of gun smoke. He absently touches the wool of his cardigan where it covers his ribs and imagines he can feel the puckered skin just under the surface.

Q’s attention is drawn to the present as he hears the tell-tale _swoosh_ of the automatic glass doors opening behind him. He closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath.

Q turns.

________

_He hasn’t aged a day in five years._

This is, absurdly, James’s first thought upon seeing Q again.

He still has the boyish curve to his cheeks, the lean, delicate body of an asset too valuable to send into the field. (James used to indulge himself in imagining M sending them on a dual mission, one where Q was the master hacker and James was the bodyguard, never leaving his side. They’d move awkwardly around each other at first, but eventually fall together, high on the adrenaline of cheating death. Q would turn to look at him, fire in his eyes, and—

Well, James always stopped himself there. He’s not quite sure as to why.)

Q is watching him with that sharp, analytical look in his eyes that Bond used to return to when he’d repurposed his Walther as a projectile despite Q’s very clear instructions per contra. Despite looking near identical to the way Bond last saw him (black-brown hair a strategic mess of curls, clad in a ridiculous cardigan and chequered trousers), Q’s eyes show just how many years it’s been since they last met. Though their green is no less brilliant, they have lost a bit of their optimistic shine. Q has seen things in these past five years. Things that, once upon a time, Bond had made his personal mission to protect him from. 

“007,” Q addresses crisply, and if he feels anything at seeing Bond again, it doesn’t show. James quirks his most charming roguish smile, opens his mouth to respond, and—

“Yes, Quartermaster,” the woman next to him replies, and she really deserves an award for how many times she’s managed to throw James for a loop in the past twenty-four hours. She’s likely surpassed Q’s previous record during the Skyfall incident, in that regard.

 _It makes sense_ , James thinks, brutally quashing whatever emotion rises in him at the idea of someone else using _his_ call sign before he can even identify it. It’s not like James is some star football player whose kit got retired after a last game. Thanks in no small part to the man that stands before him, the double-oh programme is still in full swing, though James suspects some changes have been made. It’s only logical that they’d assign his call sign elsewhere after his departure.

“A mission well done,” Q continues, sliding a tray across the auxiliary standing desk that he used to claim to hate.

(“Makes me feel like some sort of dictator,” Q had told him around a mouthful of fried rice, once. “Standing up there, surveilling the branch...they know what they’re doing. They get their work done. And if they need anything, my door’s most always open.”

“Don’t you think that just encourages them to play Galaga instead of actually working?” James had asked from his seat on Q’s couch, nursing a recently-broken wrist. He’d convinced Q to spoon him a few bites of his own tikka masala lunch before the Quartermaster’s attention had been recaptured by a coding project.

Q’s responding smile had been sly as he motioned to the wall of security monitors across from him. “Ever heard of Foucault’s work on the Panopticon, 007?”)

The woman steps forward without hesitation, setting her Walther and Beretta on the tray, along with her earwig, one of Q’s radios, what looks to be a lock pick kit, and a few bottles of some substance or other that James is unfamiliar with.

“Did you get to test these?” Q asks, gingerly picking one up to examine the viscous liquid inside. It glints rainbow as it catches the overhead light.

“Tested that one,” the woman—and James wishes he had another name for her, because despite how capable she’s proven herself to be, he can’t think of her as 007, not quite yet—responds as she unclips her chest holster. “Kept me up for seventy-two hours straight, no fatigue. I sent the log to biochem, but the only negative side effect I noted was an elevated heart rate.”

“Hm,” Q hums musically, setting the vial down before picking up her Walther, turning it this way and that under a careful eye. He wraps those typist’s fingers around the grip, and James sees the LEDS light up yellow out of the corner of his eye. The corners of Q’s mouth dip down in a frown.

“When’s the last time this was used?”

“Yesterday,” the agent replies, giving a sidelong glance at Bond. Q looks a mote concerned, and James wants to ask about it, but he gets the distinct impression that this is a don’t-speak-unless-you’re-spoken-to type of deal. What with how Q hasn’t addressed him once, and all.

“I’ll...take a look at that later,” the Quartermaster says, setting the Walther back down again. “The important thing is that it came back _whole_.” And Q’s gaze levels on Bond’s face again. He’s trying to hide it, Bond can tell, but Q’s always been a bit of an open book, and there’s just the tiniest spark of amusement dancing behind those green eyes. It sends a little jolt through James’s body, like the feeling of catching yourself on something solid right as you begin to trip.

“Q,” he offers.

A tick at the edge of Q’s mouth.

“Bond.”

He slides the metal tray across the desk towards James with a meaningful look, and Bond reacts without thinking, unholstering his pistol and setting it down. Even Q looks a bit surprised at the immediacy. There’s a pregnant pause as they both look down at the weapon. Q recovers first.

“Everything will be returned to you after your meeting with M. Sorry, it’s standard procedure for outside parties.”

“ _Outside parties_?” James jokes (only partially). “Oh Q, you’re hurting my feelings.”

Something in Q’s expression goes funny, but he turns to his laptop screen before James can read into it.

“ _All_ of it, Bond,” and James can see, just over Q’s shoulder, a full outline of his own body on the screen. It’s marked with little red boxes.

“Invasive,” James notes levelly, reaching to his thigh holster for the knife hidden there.

“Precaution,” is Q’s reply, and something tells James that he’s missed a major happening in these past five years.

Q doesn’t turn around until James has turned out all his pockets and his scan is devoid of little red boxes.

He takes in the myriad of trinkets Bond has placed on the tray with raised eyebrows, reaching out to gingerly pick up a little digital lock pick in the shape of a pen. “This is mine,” he comments mildly, looking up to level a single, solitary eyebrow at James.

“Technically it belongs to the British government,” and _oh,_ if that doesn’t earn James what he was hoping for. Q’s mouth twists into a half-smirk like he can’t decide whether he should be amused or annoyed, but his eyes, beneath thick frames, are bright with mischief.

“You were supposed to turn _everything_ in when we off boarded you.”

“Maybe I just wanted something to remember you by.” And there’s the ticket. Q gives a little huff of air out of his nose and rolls his eyes, stiff posture melting into something a little more comfortable. 

He props a hip against the desk, still fiddling with the little cylinder between his fingers. “If it’s still in one piece, I suppose you never found the detonation capabilities.”

James’s eyes go wide. “It _explodes_?” The initial excitement wears off rapidly, though, and he lets on a bit of a scowl. “You’re yanking my chain.”

“Am I?” Q asks mischievously, setting the lock pick back down on the tray. “I suppose you’ll never know.”

James can’t help the chuckle that bursts, easy and natural, from his chest. Q’s got his arms crossed, but the smile on his face, though small, is genuine. Before, James had kept a mental tally of how many times he could make Q smile like that. It had started out as once monthly, then weekly. Then daily.

“Quartermaster,” and, from the look on Q’s face, James isn’t the only one who feels like he’s been doused with cold water. The agent is watching them mildly; scrutiny clear on her face. “Forgive the interruption, but Bond and I are being expected.”

Whatever warmth had blossomed in Q’s visage is gone in an instant, replaced by the cool, steely professionalism of _the Quartermaster_. Bond bites the inside of his cheek hard.

“Right oh, then. Mustn’t keep M waiting,” he says before collecting the tray. “Make sure you mention the serum in your debrief. I’m still trying to convince him that biochem is a worthwhile endeavor.”

“The usual, tonight?” She asks, and Q turns, blinking owlishly beneath his glasses.

“Oh, Seven, I apologize. We’ve just promoted another handler and I’d like to oversee her initial training."

“I understand,” she responds, turning to leave. James follows suit. “We’ll just have to grab a pint another time.”

James swears he sees her smirk at him as she leaves through the branch doors.

________

That night, Q’s cats are absolutely pissed at him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: hates slow burns  
> Also me: writes slow burns  
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t even want to know how you got this address,” Q says, slowly lowering his personal glock so that it rests against his thigh. “Especially since I’ve moved two times in the past five years.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A consistent updating schedule? Never heard of her.
> 
> Also, a quick word of thanks to those of you who are consistently reading & commenting! Your support means a lot to me & it’s amazing to know that someone else is enjoying my rambling.

“I don’t even want to know how you got this address,” Q says, slowly lowering his personal glock so that it rests against his thigh. “Especially since I’ve moved two times in the past five years.”

“Bad neighborhoods?” Bond intones like he’s not got half of his body through Q’s bloody bedroom window. Q puts a hand to his bedside table like he’s going to put the gun away, but in actuality he’s grasping for something solid as all of the adrenaline in his body dissipates in a dizzying rush.

“No, I fancied more room,” he snaps as his knees solidify again. “Why do you _think_ it might be beneficial for someone with a job like mine to move house every few years?”

He really does put the gun away this time, and when he turns back, Bond has hoisted himself the rest of the way through the window. He’s sitting all casual-like at the edge of Q’s bed, and if Q hadn’t been damn near convinced not sixty seconds ago that he was about to be lifted from the sanctity of his own home, he might be a little more interested in that image.

“You couldn’t’ve just rang the bell?”

The responding smile is wry. “Oh, Q. You know me better than that.” When he stands, Q has to take a step back to keep their distance from straying too far towards personal. “And I didn’t know if you’d actually answer the door once you saw it was me.”

“You’re lucky I don’t have an itchy trigger finger,” Q says, because the other option is admitting that he wouldn’t have hesitated even a moment to answer. “Fat lot of help you’d have been if I’d gotten you in the chest.”

The cats seem to have decided that it’s safe again, because Benny comes trotting in from the hallway with a wary-looking Björn close behind. Benny marches straight up to Bond, giving him a precursory sniff before plopping down at his feet like he’s known the man all his life. Björn, who is now officially Q’s favorite, lingers back by the doorframe, tail swishing sinuously from side-to-side.

“Q, if you wanted to shoot me, you would have done it after the komodo dragon,” and Lord help him, Bond actually squats down to offer a hand to Benny. The tabby almost immediately rubs his face up against it, looking absolutely pleased as punch and not at all like he’s cozying up to a veritable home invader. “And who’s this?”

“That _traitor,_ ” Q says with an over-dramatized sniff, “is Benny. His _older_ , _wiser,_ and far more handsome brother back there is Björn.”

Björn chirps behind him as if in acknowledgement.

Bond’s eyes are bright with mirth when he looks back up. “You didn’t.” It takes a full second for Q to understand what he’s referring to. In Q’s defense, it is half-three in the morning, and Bond smiles like this so rarely that each and every instance must be properly admired.

“Do you have a problem with ABBA?” Q asks in a tone of voice that very much suggests that he might ask Bond to leave his home should his answer be unsatisfactory.

“No, no problems here,” and Bond actually _picks_ _up Q’s cat_ , scratching lightly between Benny’s ears. The spoiled little thing is purring set to rival a motorcycle. “Though I am surprised you don’t have an Agnetha and Anni-Frid.”

Björn cements his position as the favorite son by padding up to run slow figure-eights between Q’s legs, reassuring him that he is, in fact, an adequate parent. “Didn’t think I had the time to properly care for four cats,” he says, looking up as the microwave dings. “Only reason I even adopted Benny in the first place was because Björn seemed so lonely. Plus, if I know anything about these two eligible bachelors, four cats would quickly multiply into double digits.”

There’s an awkward pause as Q tries to decide what exactly he’s supposed to do next in this abnormal situation. He eventually elects to leave for the kitchen to retrieve his leftovers, and is not at all surprised when Bond follows him like he’s decided that he also lives in Q’s flat, now.

Four and Seven’s Walthers are laid out on the kitchen table, and Q checks on them as he passes. They’re both still in the process of transferring logs from their internal memory to Q’s laptop, and a quick glance reveals nothing out of the ordinary. Every palmprint the guns have registered in the past quarter year belongs to one of Q’s agents, with the occasional instance of a handler or R or Q himself.

“What’s going on with those?” Bond asks with a jerk of his chin towards the table. Benny has climbed up so he’s half-draped over Bond’s shoulder.

“He wants you to scratch at the base of his tail,” the bowl of noodles is hot when Q takes it from the microwave, and he curses and sets it down on the counter abruptly. “And the Walthers are acting like they’ve gone through a reboot sequence. I thought it was an isolated incident, but apparently not.” 

Bond does as he’s told, and Q’s cat goes absolutely boneless with glee against him. Q can’t help the low _tsk_ that escapes him, and he goes over to the fridge to retrieve a few cans of tuna. He’s apparently got his cats conditioned to the metallic _click_ of the can opening, because Björn appears instantly from the bedroom and Benny’s ears go straight at the sound. 

After a short-lived battle between his stomach and his apparent starvation for affection, Benny hops down from Bond’s arms and trots over to where Q’s emptying the treat into his bowl. 

Bond’s moved over to the table, scanning over the rows and rows of green text scrolling down Q’s laptop screen. “Is there a master command that can be run on all of the modified Walthers?”

When they’d first met, Q would have pegged Bond as near technologically illiterate. He’d spent the next few years proving Q wrong, though Q still needed to gently remind him of YouTube’s autoplay feature every now and again.

“Yes, but only a select few of my branch agents know how to initiate it,” the noodles have cooled enough when Q goes back a second time, and he snags a pair of chopsticks from his utensil drawer and begins eating. “I have two deep-cover extractions to direct tomorrow, so I suppose we’ll know if it ran on the lot of them once we establish contact again.”

“Don’t touch,” he smacks Bond’s hand lightly when it goes for one of the guns. “Trigger a scan while it’s transferring information and I’ll have to start the whole thing over again.” 

It occurs vaguely to Q that if the worst had somehow managed to happen in the past five years and Bond had gone all Benedict Arnold on them, it would be ridiculously easy for him to extract important information from Q. Or, hell, now he knows where Q’s glock is. But Q still trusts Bond implicitly, struggles to even picture the man levelling a gun at Q’s forehead with the intent to kill. The thought still puts a twinge of unease in Q’s gut, though, and he sets his now-empty bowl down so that he can cross his arms, vaguely self-protecting.

“Not that I don’t enjoy hosting the occasional three a.m. get-together, but why exactly are you here?”

A few seconds of silence tick by in which Q watches Bond go through a face journey starting at contemplation and ending in a mild sense of confusion, like he’s similarly unsure as to why he grappled up the side of Q’s complex well past the witching hour. “They set me up in a room a few blocks down,” he finally says, taking a seat at Q’s kitchen table. “It’s...quiet.”

“You’re lonely.” It’s meant to be teasing, but Q finds his tone to be strangely gentle as it comes out. “It still begs the question of why _here,_ though.”

“Maybe I just wanted to see my favorite Quartermaster,” Bond replies with a tired-looking smirk. Q puts a hand to his ear, furrows his brows.

“Do you hear that?”

An agent’s instincts never fade. Bond is on his feet in an instant, hand going to his hip. Ah, that’s good to know. He’s got a gun on him.

“I just thought I heard the sound of Boothroyd rolling in his grave,” and Q was prepared for one of the apples from his fruit basket to come flying through the air at his face. He snags it lazily and sets it on the counter behind him. “I suppose if you’re here, you might as well tell me how your meeting with M went.”

The grimace on Bond’s face is clear. “You keep any alcohol around here?”

Q chews the inside of his cheek, bounces his head this way and that in mock contemplation. “Not usually.”

“But?”

“But Eve was here last week and she might’ve left something.”

_____

They settle in Q’s living room after, Q with a tall glass of ice water, James with some ridiculously blonde beer that had been the only option. (Save, of course, the bottles of fruity malt liquor that Bond had previously believed only undergraduates drank).

“You told me you didn’t drink,” James says levelly between sips, and Q gives him a curious sideways glance.

“I don’t. Don’t like what it does to my decision-making capabilities.”

“But you apparently go out for pints with my successor on the regular.”

James has to hand it to him, Q’s poker face can be absolutely flawless when the situation calls for it. If James has given too much of himself away with that comment, Q’s expression doesn’t show it. He remains entirely neutral as he takes a sip of his water.

“...it’s only after she completes one of her missions successfully without incident,” he responds after a moment. “Which, granted, is becoming more and more frequent as time goes on.”

Jealousy flares low in the pit of James’s gut. “I asked you to celebrate successful missions with me,” he says, carefully controlled. “Including, if I remember correctly, the Jakarta mission in which I saved _two_ of your agents.”

The clink of the ice in Q’s glass is audible over the silence of the room. The turn in atmosphere between them has set James’s shoulders in a tense, straight line. Even the cats, who have finished their feast and are now settled in their beds on the hearth, have stilled entirely.

“She brings her equipment back in one piece,” Q posits. James knows that he’s deflecting, but the finality of Q’s tone signals that this line of conversation has reached its end.

Silence falls between them; the tense, stifling kind that used to only exist after missions in which James had purposefully put himself in harm’s way. Needing to distract himself from the way Q’s hands clench in the fabric of his trousers, James takes a moment to glance around the room. Instead of the sterile, impersonal iving quarters one might expect to see from someone who moves as often as Q does, James finds the space to be just as strategically chaotic as the man himself. The couch that James is sitting on and both chairs (including the one that Q’s perched on the armrest of) are draped with quilts that look hand-made. Books spill across an antique-looking bookshelf and out of several unpacked moving boxes. There are cat toys in various states of disrepair strewn about the floor.

“Bond,” Q begins cautiously, breaking the silence. James’s shoulders feel as though someone has settled a heavy weight upon them. _Christ_ , he’s tired.

“You had started to call me James, before I left.”

“Had I.” It’s not a question, and Q sounds as tired as Bond feels. “Why?”

Bond knows exactly which question it is that Q is asking. And there are so many answers, though Bond has a feeling none of them will be satisfying enough for Q.

“Q,” and it’s funny how much meaning that singular letter has come to hold. “Can’t it just be that it was time? Double-oh agents rarely make it to retirement. Maybe I was ready to live the rest of my life out on a beach somewhere.”

“We both know that’s bullshite.” Q won’t look at him anymore. Perhaps that’s for the best, considering the fact that James has rarely been able to resist the vulnerability in those green eyes. “You wouldn’t’ve gone unless M had forcibly pulled your commission. And even then you’d probably have gone vigilante on us until we had no choice but to reinstate you.”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing now?”

“Is it?”

Q’s watching him closely now, with that look on his face that he gets when he’s working on a few lines of particularly tricky coding. James meets his gaze evenly. He’s not sure what Q sees there, but whatever it is makes the corners of Q’s mouth dip down infinitesimally. 

“Where’s Dr. Swann, Bond?”

“Somewhere safe,” James says, and now it’s his turn to sound finite. It wasn’t Madeline’s fault that she had been dragged into the absolute madness that was and _is_ Spectre. It also wasn’t Madeline’s fault that James had seen so much of what he wanted for himself in her. She’d managed to leave the fate seemingly predestined for her behind, make a life and name for herself somewhere far away. Madeline had symbolized an escape, a way for Bond to end the curse of leaving bodies in his wake. Alec, and Vesper, and M...

They had quickly realized how partial Madeline was to her independence, and that James had been more in love with the idea of her than anything else. But like hell if he was going to let another innocent person lose their life solely for the apparently unforgivable crime of _knowing him_. They’d set her up in a little out-of-the-way clinic, not so different from the one in Austria that he’d originally found her in. There hadn’t been any hard feelings between them, besides, perhaps, a soft regret for what could have been.

Not a month later, a dozen armed men stormed the rusty old cabin James had been renting out, bringing with them the news that Franz had somehow escaped MI6’s grasp. After he’d dealt with them, he’d called Madeline from a pay phone in town, heart in his throat until she answered, concerned for him but otherwise totally unharmed.

“My turn to ask a question,” and the corner of Q’s jaw twitches, just a tick, against where he’s got his teeth clenched. For someone who’s normally so unguarded with his expressions, Q’s lack thereof when something has upset him is entirely disconcerting. “How did Franz escape?”

Long, pale fingers drum along the outside of Q’s thigh. The man really is all legs, James notes will a dull interest. He’s got them stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles in a painfully forced gesture of ease.

“You do know that we outsource to HMP Wakefield,” the Quartermaster says after a moment. “It’s not as if he just waltzed out of ‘Six’s front doors.”

“And here I thought MI6’s duty was to protect the country from all threats foreign and domestic.”

“Thank you, Bond,” Q snaps, tone acidic. “I do know exactly who it is that I work for. You’re acting as though we just trapezed down to Yorkshire, threw his cell door wide, and told him that he could have a ten-second head start.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve done something like that.” The jolt that goes through Q’s body is visible, and James immediately regrets playing that card. Q had spent years after the Silva incident blaming himself for what had happened following the man’s escape. James couldn’t count the times he’d left the office only to come back the next morning and find Q still there, painstakingly testing and retesting fail-safe measures he’d designed to make sure it could never happen again.

Q is shaking. It’s minute, but Bond can see it along the line of his shoulders and where his fingers clench against the knees of his trousers. 

“Why did you come here, Bond?” His voice is dangerously steady, a complete lack of inflection. 

(It’s the same way he’d said “Agent down”, once upon a time, when they’d lost 001 to a rogue CIA operative on a routine mission. He’d stood there after, statue-still at his desk, flingers white where they were wrapped around its edges. Eventually, Eve had ushered him away with gentle words and a thinly-veiled threat to send him down to Psych for an eval should she deem it necessary. James had watched them go, sobered in the certainty that his Quartermaster would some day become just as familiar with death as the agent was himself.)

(James has a feeling that the present Q, who is watching him with a cold fire in his eyes, has faced death in ways that James isn’t yet privy to.)

“I’m here to kill Oberhauser,” James states simply, and he watches Q’s expression go almost impossibly sharper. “Whether or not your employer agrees with my methods.”

Q’s stood now, full of potential energy and nearly vibrating from the top of his ridiculous head of hair all the way down to those long, long legs. In any other situation, James might feel some pride in the fact that he’d managed to get so far up under Q’s feathers. Now, it’s just a sour kind of regret.

“No, James, why did you come _here_?” 

And James knows the answer. Knows why he chose to seek out Q’s flat rather than M’s, or Tanner’s, or Eve’s. But to tell Q why is to make him another body left in James’s wake, another life for Franz to systematically hunt down and snuff out and dangle above James’s head like an extra blade to the guillotine. 

Q’s death would be the last. Q’s death would finally be the one that took James with it.

Instead of stopping to wonder why he knows this with a burning certainty, and why this man, his Quartermaster, who he’s never even so much as kissed before, holds so much power over him, James stands. Casually, he straightens out the creases in his trousers, brushes a few stray cat hairs off the arms of his jacket. 

“It was close,” he says, and then turns, because Q’s laser-focus is making him feel not unlike an ant under a magnifying glass. An ant that’s dangerously close to catching fire.

_____

If James had bothered to glance to his right when he’d left out the front door, he would have seen the glitch that distorted Q’s laptop screen for less than half a second, sending dead pixels across the data displayed there. 

He also would have seen the three yellow dots that lit, like a warning, across each Walther’s rear sight. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise y’all that these two will get together eventually, lol.
> 
> The rest of this fic has been planned & outlined! Now to get it out of my head and into existence.


End file.
